Exhibitions

Who were the friends who gathered to enjoy Storm’s amateur films of an evening. Initially Storm went to Maine with an old friend who appears often in her footage — Mabel Griffin. Like Storm, Griffin also taught school in the Bronx, but she was an elementary school teacher while Storm taught English at the prestigious Evander Childs High School. In Storm’s footage, Griffin appears in house dresses and trousers. She looks so at home in those trousers (topped with a pea coat and accessorized with a beret and what looks a lot like a man purse) that it’s hard not see her house-dress self as her passing self. But was Griffin in fact a lover of Ruth’s? Judging by the surface of things — owning property jointly, changing deeds when it seemed one would die before the other, changing the deeds again at a midnight hour when the opposite one’s death became imminent, Mabel’s butch appearance in trousers, their long close friendship — yes seems the inevitable answer. But when a known lover of Ruth’s, a much younger woman, Tibby Kramer, asked Mabel that question on her deathbed, her answer was reportedly no. Ruth had invited a sexual relationship, Mabel acknowledged, but Mabel had not acquiesced. Lesbianism just didn’t appeal to her. True? Maybe. Or perhaps Mabel told Tibby what Tibby needed to hear.

Another lifelong close friend of Storm’s, a lesbian who also reputedly denied ever having been a lover, was the violinist and sculptor Chenoweth “Chennie” Hall who became the life partner of Maine writer Miriam “Mimi” Colwell. Storm’s footage includes other neighbors and acquaintances as well, some we’ve already identified through interviews, others who so far remain unknown. But there is another rich source for locating Storm’s larger circle: the witty scrapbooks kept by Chennie and Mimi. These are now housed in Special Collections at the University of Maine Library, Orono. Here are a few of the extraordinary snapshots in those albums.